The long-awaited "mean, country dogs" have finally arrived!
The one thing that non-cyclists seem to resonate with is the idea of a cyclist being harassed by a dog. It brings an immediate chuckle. Therein lies the problem. How could something as cute as one's "puppy wuppy" possibly cause a cyclist any problem? They just don't understand.
I've been thinking a lot about how to represent dogs in the game while on bike rides. I've been wondering if I, perhaps, have exaggerated the danger posed by uncontrolled dogs on these Georgia country dogs. When I first started riding my bike to work after moving to Nowhere Road, I was surprised by my fear of dogs. I had a lot of flashbacks to the problems I had while delivering newspapers on the Southside of Pittsburgh as a kid. This fear was reinforced by discussions with bike riding friends plus the experts at Dixon's Bicycles -- an excellent local bike shop to which I take my bike for repairs and tune-ups, and where I bought my current bike. All have made it clear to me the dangers of how a dog can bring down an unwary cyclist. There is one stretch of Nowhere Road, only about a half mile from my house, where a group of about 4-5 dogs roam unrestricted (which I quickly named "the valley of fear"; yes, I will have a photo of this stretch of road in the game). For the first two or three months, out of fear, I actually took another route to work, going about 2 miles out of my way, just to avoid this 200 yard stretch of road. In fact, this alternate route avoided Nowhere Road altogether. Finally, I decided enough was enough. I did some research and found a recommendation for "dog repellent" by several bicycling organizations that uses a mixture of water mixed with a little ammonia. Somehow, being armed with this defensive weapon empowered me to brave the dogs on Nowhere Road. Slowly, I became familiar with the dogs -- and they with me. I also kept up my research on the psychology of dogs. I learned that most dogs are more interested in chasing away a biker so as to protect their territory. Very few are intent on actually catching the rider. Of course, the level of aggressiveness still depends on the dog and the breed. Through experience, I learned that certain dogs will put on quite a display of bravado, but will not venture off of their property to actually chase me on the road itself. These dogs are clearly protecting their territory and are making sure I keep moving away from it. But others are quick to run after me on Nowhere Road itself. Some still seem just to want to chase me away -- they run beside me but seem careful to keep their distance from me. But, there are those dogs that are clearly intent on grabbing me if they can. They run very close to me and go after my pedaling feet, coming within inches with teeth-bared mouths aiming toward my ankles. I've also learned that dogs are fast. Most keep up with me with little trouble. Of course, the problem may be that I'm just slow! Whatever the cause, these dogs are keeping up with for at least short distances and are placing both of us at risk. So far, only one dog has shown what I consider the most dangerous behavior of all -- running in front of me. This particular dog, a beagle, runs at full speed out of its unfenced yard towards me, then just ahead of me. Most often, it runs directly in front of me for short distances barking wildly. This is a spot at which I am biking downhill at a good grade -- I would have to brake hard to slow my acceleration. Every time this dog "greets me" I pray that no car will come around the bend, catching it and me off guard, startling it enough to jump in front of me so both of us collide and go flying. If ever the two of us would collide at this moment, I'm sure the dog would be killed and I wonder about the injuries I would sustain. At about the same moment, I wonder if its owner has any idea of the danger that this "pet" is causing to itself and a fellow human being. I doubt it.
Finally, I've also learned about the "pack mentality". It sure seems that when there are more than one dog, the individual dogs behave differently. On my ride, luckily I only have one spot -- the valley of fear -- at which a group of dogs is present. My main strategy is to go as fast as I can to just get by this pack. Most of the time, this works fine. But, I need to concentrate to keep aware of my position on the road and the position of the dogs because my tendency is to veer left. If a car if approaching from the rear, this places me at great risk. It is also very difficult to keep aware of the position of the individual dogs. A good friend, David Noah, told me recently about a time he was chased by a pack of dogs while riding his bike. He said it seemed as though they had a strategy because one dog seemed to chase him in one direction, attracting Dave's attention, while another dog went in for the kill, eventually biting Dave's leg rather badly.
Again, the most frustrating part of all of this is the irresponsibility of the dog owners. The dogs are just doing what they do naturally. It is up to the owners to keep their dogs under control. (I have two dogs, so I share this responsibility.) Enough about this, let's move on to the game design.
I resisted the temptation to find that "perfect graphic" of a mean country dog before proceeding with the programming. It was a difficult temptation to ignore. But I couldn't help but do several searches on the web for dog graphics. I found a couple, such as the famous "Addy" dog graphics that come with HyperStudio, but none fit the bill for a mean country dog. So, I just stopped looking, went back to Authorware, and used an orange block to represent a dog in the game. I then worked on the programming for awhile, then did a search on the Internet for dog graphics. I found some good sites. I "borrowed" some graphics of a large, medium, and small dog for the current prototype (yes, I fully intend to contact the owners of this web site for permission to use the graphics in the final form of the game).
Sometimes, when I program something, I can't remember how it works the next day. I hate when this happens! This is exactly what occurred during the programming of the mean country dogs. I had successfully programmed the first stage of this feature, where a dog appears and slowly moves toward the biker. But the next evening, when I wanted to build onto this code to add some complexity to the conditions under which the dogs appeared and how the biker needed to deal with them, I just couldn't grasp the logic of what I had done the night before. In fact, for several evenings I sat and stared at the code, tried to retrace my thinking and the steps, but it just looked like gobbleteegook (sorry, that's a technical term which means "programming crud"). It really was no big deal and I eventually figured it out. I just needed some time and the right "mood" to be able to concentrate sufficiently.
While confronted, and confused, by the "how did I do that?" phenomenon, I decided to do something productive. So, I spent time some rearranging of the screen elements. I moved all elements pertaining to the biker to the bottom of the screen (recall that I had the biker, gear selector, and hill gauge on the top, and the roadway graphic, dog repellent and water bottle, etc. at the bottom). This was idiotic - what was I thinking! The player's attention was divided to every part of the screen inappropriately plus the unity of the game elements was missing, No problemo. It was quick and easy to move the elements to new locations, though it took a few extra minutes to revise the animation of the hill gauges and the gear selector.
I also added some consequences to poor steering. Simply, if the player veers too far left or right and goes off of the shoulder into the grass, the game ends. There is a lot more I could do here. If the biker's speed is low, little damage would be done and I see no reason why I should not just give a "stern" warning and let the game proceed. However, at a moderate or high speed, the consequences of running off of the road could, of course, be severe. I think this would be a good time to remind the player of the importance of wearing a helmet, since a helmet could turn a potentially life-threatening situation into just scrapes and bruises.
I made some much needed improvements to the roadway graphic in this prototype, thanks to the suggestions of David Noah, whom I've already mentioned above. Dave is another doctoral student in our department and has an art education background, plus is a very talented and creative fellow (check out his Zeitgeist cartoon strip on his web site). I had been bugging Dave for a few weeks to check out the game and to lend a hand with some of the graphics, specifically the graphic of the bicycle in the middle of the roadway that is meant to give the player a first-person view. In particular, I wanted to get some arms into this graphic. We finally got together on a Friday and I gave Dave the guided tour of the game. It was a productive session. Dave had some great ideas about how to improve the roadway graphic, several of which I could not entertain due to my programming limitations with Authorware. My original goal was to get the horizon in the view, kind of like you were behind and below the cyclist a few feet. I clearly wasn't achieving this illusion. Through discussing the angles of view with Dave, I saw that a much better approach was to just have the roadway appear as though the cyclist was looking down over the handlebars, seeing only the roadway. Dave thought he could spend some time in a few days to sketch a better first-person cyclist graphic.
I really wanted to improve this view, so I spent some time on it right away when I got home. Still, my own graphic skills leave much to be desired and I wanted to get those arms in the view. I just knew that the appearance of arms extending into the screen with hands on the handlebars would cement the perception of the player as the cyclist. Luckily for me, my daughter Becky came home for a visit that weekend. She's the artistic one in the family and she quickly sketched out some convincing arms and hands with the AppleWorks paint program. Those are graphics you see in this prototype (though in reducing the image to fit in the screen, some pixelation occurred). Her few minutes of sketching save me several hours worth of work.
I spent some time trying to improve the "feel" of the curves. That is, I felt the challenge of the curves needed to be tweaked.
Finally, I took on the programming challenge in this prototype to give the player some options. I had planned on doing this eventually anyhow. Like any good game, it's important to keep the difficulty level optimal as the player begins playing the game and then gains expertise with it. I determined which options to give control to the user based on one-on-one interactions with people as well as some emails from friends who were trying to play the game over the Internet. For example, several people just didn't like having to pedal, or who found this repetitive motion difficulty, but wanted to complete the journey. I decided to make pedaling optional. In place of pedaling, the player can choose a cruising speed at which the bike moves without any effort. Interestingly, when I added this programming, I found that one could augment the speed of the bike by pedaling anyhow! I've termed this "moped mode". I also spend some time to make a slider bar for the player to set the cruising speed. (Interestingly, although there is now a Knowledge Object wizard for this programming, I found it easier to do it myself.)
Other options I decided to give the player the ability to turn on or off were the directions (after all, once you know how to play, these are not needed), steering consequences, the mean country dogs, and sound. It took a little doing, but I programmed the game to "remember" the last set of options to quickly allow the player to play the game over and over without having to reset these.
I also added a "pause" feature, though I am wondering if placing this in a pull-down menu is a good idea. In fact I'm wondering if any of the pull-down menus are good ideas. I'm considering replacing the pull-down menus with buttons that appear at the top-most edge of the screen. (I'd appreciate feedback on this issue if you play this prototype.)
I'm not exactly sure how long I spent developing this prototype. It depends on whether you want to include the amount of time I spent just playing the game. I'll include it, so I estimate the development time between 10-15 hours.
One can spend a lot of time playing a game just to look for stupid errors. From what I understand, the computer gaming industry employs people simply to play a game over and over to look for errors. Frankly, it sounds like a rotten job. But I spent a lot of time doing just that -- playing the game to look for errors and to get a sense of whether the "feel" of the play was right. Trouble is, the more you play a game, the more one gets desensitized to these critical perceptual issues. All the more reason to have as many other people play the game and look for good feedback. When you find someone who isn't afraid to tell you, "that's terrible", my recommendation is to revere that person.
Just the other day, I saw a good friend of mine, who also happens to be a recent graduate of our doctoral program, ride by our house on Nowhere Road just as my daughter and I were getting in the car to run to town. He yelled a fast "Hello, Dr. Rieber" (it's hard for doctoral students to call professors by their first name!), as he sped by with a friend. Well, my daughter and I quickly caught up to them, and we gave a quick and friendly honk of the horn and waved as we passed them. Lo and behold, I noticed that he was NOT wearing a helmet! Now this fellow, let's call him "Timmy", is a longtime biking enthusiast and an expert rider, so I was aghast that he was riding without his "brain bucket". I saw him a few days later and chided him greatly for this biking faux pas. I told him I couldn't believe he would ride without a helmet and reminded him of the consequences. He said that once it gets over 95 degrees, he rarely wears a helmet (the temperature lately has been soaring over a 100 on the Fahrenheit scale). I chided him all the more. So, I told him he did not have permission to ride by my house again without his helmet. I also told him to be sure to check out my "Making of Nowhere Road - the Game". Yes, public humiliation can sometimes be an appropriate instructional design technique! Timmy, if you read this, feel free to "explain yourself" by posting a comment in my NWRTG forum. I'd like to think our graduates know better. :)